Immortals
by Joanne Mariexx
Summary: As far as second chances go, the universe is rarely so generous. Or: The Walking Dead isn't the right comparison, but it's the first that comes to mind.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: Okay, I w_as_ working on What You Own, but I had a dumb idea that I decided to post before I changed my mind. I don't even know if I'm going to keep it up, haha. Whatever. I've never written this genre before, so why not? ;) Reviews would be lovely.**

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><p>"<em>'Cause we could be immortals, immortals<br>Just not for long, for long  
>If we meet forever now, pull the blackout curtains down<br>Just not for long, for long"_

- Immortals / Fall Out Boy

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><p>The city has been dark for hours by the time Seeley Booth gets the call. A freak storm in the middle of December, rainy and cold, left homes lit only by the weak flickering of candles and dimming flashlights, streets pitch dark and silent. A sheet, as it seemed, had just come down over DC and left its people blind, lazily stumbling about in the night, asleep at dawn. It's then when the agent's phone rings, when the first thin spots of sunlight start brushing against his window.<p>

He is certainly no stranger to wakeup calls at the break of daylight. So, tearing himself away from the warmth of his bedcovers, he sets himself upright and answers, his mind strolling along in his first moments of wakefulness. Another body, probably. It's always another body.

Instead of some other officer on the other end of the line, however, it's a stranger. It's this low, hushed voice, asking if this is Special Agent Seeley Booth she's speaking to. And if his badge and driver's license are at all in sync, the answer is an undoubted _yes_. He tells her as much. She goes right on.

"Agent Booth, I have to ask you to come down to United Medical Center as soon as you can."

Now something like that – that wakes him up.

He pushes himself off the bed with enough force to startle his wife awake, and he's halfway to the bathroom by the time he forces, "Why, is there an emergency? What's wrong?" out of his mouth. He starts using his shoulder to hold his phone up as his hands start moving at ungodly speeds, accelerating his morning routine to a new level of rushed activity.

"I would prefer to speak with you in person, sir, but to be honest, I'm just not quite sure what's –"

The drawers beneath the bathroom sink slam closed as Booth runs a wet hand over his face and says clearly into the phone, "I _am_ coming, alright? I'm coming. I just want to know what's going on, so if you could just give me an _idea_ –"

"Sir, I don't _know_ what's going on," her voice is an eerie hiss, the slightest hint of fear crackling through the line. "But a man was admitted about an hour ago and is under observation, and you were the primary contact. But this shouldn't be happening, and I don't understand what's going on, but sir, you need to come right away."

"I am," he repeats, glancing over to see Bones, clumsily dressed and now wide-awake. She leaves the room, and he just barely hears the light jingle of car keys in her hand as she goes to wake Christine. They're rising with the sun outside, each one of them – up before the air loses its bite. "I am coming, do you hear me? I'm leaving my house now. So if you could stop being so goddamn cryptic, I'd really appreciate it."

"I'm so, so sorry, sir, but I can't. I can't, I can't – you really need to be here."

The line goes dead, and all Booth can bring himself to do after that is stumble out to the car, where Brennan is strapping Christine into her car seat, and get behind the wheel. As soon as they're set, he drives – and although dropping Christine off with Max takes an infuriatingly long time, it gives him time to think and mentally prepare for whatever this new crisis may be.

Jared must've gotten into some trouble. Or maybe Pops, maybe he took a fall – or what about Hodgins? If the entomologist were at all hurt, though, Angela would be the first person to call. But who knows?

Parker, he's with Rebecca, safe and sound to the best of his knowledge. And even if James Aubrey was in any trouble, Booth's name should not be anywhere near his emergency contact list.

He runs through his mental list of friends and family more times than he can count, and comes up with no conclusion. No conclusion that makes sense, anyway. But that's quite alright; the truth doesn't make much sense, either.

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><p>The sun has just barely risen by the time Booth pulls into the hospital, swinging into a parking spot with probably more speed than necessary. He climbs out of his SUV and just barely waits for Brennan to follow before he locks it, and they're inside the building before the fog of their breath can float away.<p>

They're not alone in the lobby. There are a few people mulling about, waiting for something, but they're essentially being ignored. At least, that's what Booth is led to believe when someone rushes to meet him the second he speaks his name aloud.

The receptionist's hand moves to a pager, and within seconds, a woman who sounds strikingly similar to his wakeup caller appears from some obscure room, rushing to meet him with disheveled hair and wide eyes. She leads him down a maze of hallways, all but dragging him and Brennan in her wake as she speaks, words falling out and crashing together as she goes.

"Agent Booth, my name's Dr. Carter. Like I said on the phone, there was a man brought in a few hours ago, covered in blood, not saying a word. It looked like a mugging or some other attack, but we weren't sure. We cleaned him up and had the blood tested, and the blood matched his own – that wasn't surprising. But sir, once all the blood was off, we tried to find where it came from, and there were no cuts, no bruises, no anything. There was _nothing_ there."

The detective in him rises and starts to speak before being cut off.

"But sir, that wasn't what made me call you specifically. Up until a while ago, he was a John Doe, see? No wallet or anything on him, and like I said, he wasn't saying a word. But we tried running his DNA through a database – maybe he'd been here before, right? Well, we got something back, but… Agent Booth, we got back the name of someone whose records say that he died several months ago."

The three of them slow to a stop just outside an observation window with a dark curtain drawn over it. Booth and Brennan, they can only stare at this doctor and wonder what kind of conspiracy they're being dragged into before Booth finally speaks up, his voice firm and hard.

"Doctor, I still haven't heard a name."

There is a deep, shuddering breath from a nervous doctor as she draws the curtain away.

And Booth, he's suddenly not sure whether he wants to yell at the woman or just turn around and walk out – because there is no way in this moment that he is not being played.

The words come out in a whisper, quiet enough to barely be heard. But, of course – Booth and Brennan have nothing if not keen senses. They stare as the words come and go.

"The man's name is Lance Sweets."

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><p><strong>AN: No clue when the next update is coming. Sorry I keep posting story beginnings - I'll finish everything eventually. In the meantime, I'd love a review!**


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: Well, it's 1:30 AM and here I am. I barely edited this, but it'll do. I'll edit it find an epigraph sometime tomorrow, haha. Alright, I'm going to sleep now. Goodnight, enjoy, and don't forget to review! :)**

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><p>If there is any emotion trapped inside the clone being examined in that observation room, it's impossible to tell. Sitting upright on a hospital bed, being poked and prodded and examined by nearly every doctor and nurse on the floor, he's silent as ever, his face impossibly blank. The only thing to suggest that he is even remotely human is the occasional tilt of his head, a slight bite of his lip, a blink or two - and even those are difficult to see; at least they are to the hospital staff.<p>

They're fairly easy for Seeley Booth to pick up, though, for reason other than his attention to detail and years of interrogating. From years of knowing the man whose spitting image sits on the other side of the glass, he knows just about every mannerism in the shrink's book. Every little idiosyncrasy that made the guy _Sweets _is tucked away in Booth's head, filed somewhere deep and - as of late - seldom visited. His mental image of Sweets hadn't been touched for months. That was because Sweets had been dead, cremated and irrevocably gone for months. He _still is._

"That," he breathes, turned slightly towards his wife. Brennan does not remove her eyes from the man in the other room, but simply leans her head over to hear. "That is not Sweets."

There's something dark in the woman's eyes, a kind of steely focus. She picks her head back up, so she's standing perfectly straight and tall, and calmly answers, "Of course it's not Sweets. Sweets is dead, and his ashes were scattered. It is not possible."

And that is that. Their conversation turns back into silence, allowing them to just barely hear Dr. Carter's muffled voice from the other side of the door. They see pictures of perfect strangers smiling out from a phone in her hand.

"Sir, do you recognize any of the people in this picture? Anyone at all?"

No. There's a shake of the head, slow and careful in a very _Sweets _way. The guy's eyebrows are pulled together, knitted in thought as they always were when the young psychologist spent hours hunched over his desk, picking apart cases and putting pieces together. To see that expression emulated so closely is almost unsettling, to say the very least. Regardless, the man inside doesn't recognize the old woman with the crescent glasses or the child in the _Iron Man _tee shirt or the blonde with a baby on her hip in the doctor's photos. And he shouldn't.

The doctor's phone goes back into her pocket, and in one fluid movement of her arm, she gestures without warning for Booth and Brennan to enter the room. They do so slowly, almost robotically.

"Alright, now I want you to turn your head around," she says to the man. "Do you recognize these two people?"

Obedient as ever, he turns to look as Brennan steps into view first, and then Booth. His eyes widen considerably - the first real proof of human emotion to be seen all morning - and he just stares. There's something completely unreadable in his expression, floating somewhere between fear and relief, despair and joy. It's something brand new on a familiar face.

The staring match lasts for years and years, only to finally be broken by Carter's soft interruption, a quiet repetition of her question.

"Sir? Do you recognize them?"

Yes. His eyes stay locked on the pair as he nods. Of course he recognizes them; alive or dead, cloned or copied or imaginary, Lance Sweets always would. Which begs the question – which of those is he?

Dead. _Sweets is dead._ They _watched_ the life leave his eyes on that September night, sat helplessly on the concrete floor next to smeared puddles of his blood as officials took him away. They watched him get wheeled into the lab like he was a package, and they opened him like one. They zipped him out of his body bag and found him blindly staring out at them, his lips and skin already growing blue. Cam, she performed the autopsy. Brennan and Daisy, they analyzed his bones. His _bones. _

Once a person's been on the slab, they don't come back. Yet here he is.

Supposedly.

The DNA, having been run several more times over the past hour, matches up. His face is a perfect copy of the one in Booth's phone, smiling as he held Christine on one early morning last year. The look in the guy's eyes, it absolutely screams that this is the same person. Regardless –

"You're not Sweets," the words leave Booth's mouth before he even conceives them. "Lance Sweets was murdered on September 25th, 2014. Months ago. I don't know who you are or how you're connected to him, but you're _not_ Sweets."

Brennan says nothing at first.

A brief flash of hurt flickers in the man's eyes for one solitary moment before disappearing. Slowly, and without reply, he drops his head to stare at the floor, as if the linoleum has the answers hidden in its cracks.

"Doctor, have there been x-rays taken yet?" Brennan finally asks, her first words since entering the room. Her eyes are shining and her hands are balled at her sides; but her voice is perfectly calm. Purely analytical, as close to objective as she can possibly get.

There's a shake of Carter's head. "No, but we can have it done."

After paging a technician to set up the procedure, she glances back down at the man sitting in front of them.

"Mr. Sweets –" Booth very nearly grimaces at that. "We're going to take you to another room, alright? Just for an x-ray, and then we'll come back here. How does that sound?"

This copy of Sweets raises his head to meet the doctor's eyes and lazily nods, as if accepting coffee on a tired Monday morning. Not that Booth could make a cup as good as Sweets did – but that hardly matters. It will never happen again, anyway. The coffee, that is – because the shrink is dead. That Sweets-specific nod, on the other hand, is happening right in front of him.

"Sir, can you speak?"

And he shakes his head.

"Why not?"

And his hand comes up to his neck slowly, softly rubbing the skin there. There are no marks there, no bruises or cuts. So Carter grabs the nearest light and gently commands him to open his mouth. After a few silent moments of examining him, she emerges and pages the technician once more.

"I want to order an MRI in addition to the x-ray. Can we do that…? Yes, the x-ray first. Thanks," she speaks clearly and quickly into her device before replacing it into her pocket and turning back to this pseudo-Sweets. "Alright. Come on, let's get you looked at."

And the man, he plants both feet on the ground and pushes himself off of the bed – only for his legs to start to crumple underneath him.

And as fate would have it, Booth is somehow standing close enough to Sweets to actually catch the shrink when he reaches out instinctively. As soon as the guy's steadied enough and shuffling along, though, on his shaking legs, Booth releases his hold and tries desperately to ignore how it felt to touch Sweets, whose blood was, in fact, flowing just beneath the living skin. His heartbeat, having faintly thrummed against Booth's fingers after so long, was a difficult thing to forget; especially after feeling it stop completely, all those months ago.

Life, as it seems, is a good color on Lance Sweets.

Whether he truly is alive or not.


End file.
